Canada's youngest athlete makes Olympic debut at age 14
Canada had a 14-year-old skateboarder take to the pavement in her Olympic debut at the Paris 2024 Games earlier today.
Fay De Fazio Ebert is the youngest Canadian athlete competing at the Olympic Games this year, and she finally had the chance to show her stuff on the international stage in the women’s park event this morning.
This event has skateboarders go through three 45-second runs, where they are scored on their ability to use the surfaces to gain height and pull off tricks. The difficulty of the run is also taken into consideration as well.
Scores are made on a 0-100 scale with 100 being a perfect score. Ebert managed to pick up a best score of 51.82 on her third and final run, placing her 20th in the preliminary rounds.
Canada’s youngest Olympian drops in at #Paris2024 🇨🇦🛹
The 14-year-old Fay De Fazio Ebert will not advance to the women’s park final pic.twitter.com/syQoKzmchF
— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) August 6, 2024
Unfortunately, this score was not good enough for Ebert to advance to the finals of the park event as she came third-last in the preliminary round. The top score of the round came from 15-year-old Japanese skater Cocona Hiraki, who scored 88.07.
Despite not making the final, it sounds like the Toronto-born skater was happy to be in France and have an opportunity to represent Canada in the skateboarding event.
“This time it didn’t really work out as I wanted but I am so happy to be here and I’m so excited that I got to experience this,” Ebert told CBC in an interview after her run.
14 years old at the Olympic Games 🤯 pic.twitter.com/cDShswF9bS
— Rob Williams (@RobTheHockeyGuy) August 6, 2024
Ebert has had quite a bit of success in the park event during her young career so far. She won gold in the event at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile. She also won a silver and bronze medal in park and street events, respectively, at the 2020 Canadian Championships.
Though she is quite young to be competing on the world stage, Ebert has been skateboarding since she was just eight years old.
Her participation in the Olympics this year made her the youngest Canadian Olympian since 1976. The youngest-ever Canadian Olympian title belongs to swimmer Barbara Hounsell, who was just 13 years old when she competed in the Tokyo 1964 Games.
On the other side of the spectrum, Canada’s oldest athlete at Paris 2024 is equestrianist Jill Irving, who is 61.